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T-Tail-Tall-Tail:
Rules?
Dick Reichelt
The "RULES" are monitored by clipboard people. Some
rules are much more
flexible for bending than others. For example, the
"rule" of not coming back
with more baggage than you went out with seemed to
be very high on the
bend-the-rule list. Some crews were grumpier about
this than others.
I admit I was bad. I am sure crew members flinched
when they saw "Reichelt"
listed on the flight orders. "Oh no, not the
shopper"! Always being gone on the
C-141 required a lot of bribes to get back into he
really good graces with my
family ...uh, wife.
The thing was, C-141 crews everywhere usually
"staged", e.g. one leg of the
total journey at a time, while the airplane kept
going. The first leg started
at our home base. Bags on the bus, bags off the bus,
bags on the airplane, bags
off the airplane, bags on the bus, bags off the bus
into our quarters to crew
rest. That describes leg # 1 with maybe five more to
go." Those were the
infamous "baggage drills"
My next-door neighbor at Dover was a C-133 driver,
(remember that airplane).
THEY had the luxury of keeping the very same
airplane all the way around the
system. A shopper's delight, although, unlike the
superbly reliable C-141, the
133 had the unnerving ability to disappear. I mean
disappear - as in
"completely-without-a-trace". So lets live with the
baggage drills OK?
Staging C-141 crews were the same worldwide, kind of
stoic about the drill,
they endured it. Good guys all of them.
Early on, we could even bring back motorcycles,
resulting in some tough drills!
I believe on one of those trips in June of 1967 we
set the motorcycle speed
record of 631 knots. The drill was to get an empty
cargo compartment going
home, clear the aisle and let 'er rip. We often
discussed setting the pigeon
speed record also. Would birds released in the rear
flying forward really be
going 600? Oh, never mind. I digress.
I had a really favorite street on Okinawa where
everything was available:
china, stoneware, stereo stuff, and toys, which were
a favorite. One foray onto
my favorite shopping street resulted in the purchase
of $150 worth of
fireworks. It was a lot of fireworks, not in weight
but in bulk. They were
destined for the baggage drill.
I am sure we all bent some rules sometimes, but out
east we had a rule bender
that acquired the nickname "the astronaut". An
educated individual. Maybe he
didn't make the astronaut program, maybe he was an
undercover Lockheed test
pilot, or maybe he just didn't have any common
sense.
We heard stories that he held the operational
altitude record for the C-141:
over 61,000 feet. He would take "sun shots" with a
string and Nav plotter to
plot a position. Imagine him trying to confirm the
position with the navigator
"Nav, A/C. Where are we?" Nav thinks we're in the
STRATOSPHERE. You're an
idiot! (I give navigators credit for being the smart
guys on a crew.) What a
tribute to the airplane that nothing serious came
out of that rule bending! A
loss of cabin pressure at that altitude turns
everyone into chicken soup. So in
that case the rule bending was not good.
But-everyone has their favorite.
Back at Elmendorf, at last. Maybe just one more
stop. Two more drills, maybe a
few more rules to deal with. Customs/Agriculture
does a preliminary check at
the airplane upon parking. Usually everyone mills
around the entrance door
presenting their Customs forms. I needed some
privacy with this "clipboard"
person, which I could see I was not going to get.
"Pssst sir: I have something here, 'er, uhmmmm
fireworks".
He yells, "FIREWORKS! #$^&$�^%^?X#@*+! That's
class "A" explosives!
EXPLOSIVES! ##*@!! WHERE'S THE AIRCRAFT COMMANDER?"
Immediately it got very quiet. You could not hear a
breath. No one said
anything, but simultaneously 7 heads turned. 14
eyeballs locked on me.
"Err .. That's me sir. I know", I stammered. "Uh,
mmmmm. You see sir, I
promised my sons a REALLY patriotic 4th
of July this year. I'm gone
so much; they would really enjoy spending some
quality time with me, being just
back from the war zone and all, helping our men
overseas…..
It was the best 4th of July EVER at Dover
AFB
09/01/2004
Richard (Dick) Reichelt richreichelt@msn.com